Chota Valley Spanish (CVS)

Chota Valley Spanish (CVS), Choteño is a form of Spanish developed in the provinces of Imbabura and Carchi in the Chota Valley region (Tumbabiro, Carpuela, Chota, San-tiago, Chalguayacu, Chamanal, Concepción, Caldera and Cuajara) of northern Ecuador. It is spoken among the Afro-descendant population. Because Chota does not have radical change in its grammatical structure, it is not considered a creole but a form, dialect of Spanish. Study of the language took off in the 80's.

Origin

Some believed Chota developed from an Afro-Portuguese creole in the western coast of Africa. This is largely due to the plural pronoun eles, which is Portugese , the only source of such a term. Others believed it developed from an Afro-Portuguese creole developed or imported to the Chota Valley, which later became decreolized into its Spanish form. Another theory hold that because of socialization that favored acquisition of Spanish--majority native born blacks with gradual introduction of black slave, ready access to standard Spanish-- and negation of the Portuguese creole, Chota developed.

Form

Chota makes use of the ele. Ele is a Portuguese pronoun. It can be singular and plural and has no gender. This is also found in Palenquero. It makes use of paragogic vowels, feature found in other African influenced Spanish. In addition, Chota Spanish makes use of rhotics sounds. It deletes or diminishes the r sound at the end of words. For example, in the word 'dolor', the r is dropped becoming doló; in 'amor', the r is dropped to become amó. Its Lexicon(vocabulary) is majority Spanish but borrows from african languages.